Today LyondellBasell Industries (LYB) Hits New Lifetime High

Editor's Note: Any reference to TheStreet Ratings and its underlying recommendation does not reflect the opinion of TheStreet, Inc. or any of its contributors including Jim Cramer or Stephanie Link.

Trade-Ideas LLC identified LyondellBasell Industries ( LYB) as a new lifetime high candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified LyondellBasell Industries as such a stock due to the following factors:

LYB has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $299.5 million.

LyondellBasell Industries N.V., together with its subsidiaries, manufacturers and sells chemicals and polymers; refines crude oil; produces gasoline blending components; and develops and licenses technologies for the production of polymers. The stock currently has a dividend yield of 2.8%. LYB has a PE ratio of 12.8. Currently there are 11 analysts that rate LyondellBasell Industries a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and 3 rate it a hold.

The average volume for LyondellBasell Industries has been 3.5 million shares per day over the past 30 days. LyondellBasell has a market cap of $47.2 billion and is part of the basic materials sector and chemicals industry. The stock has a beta of 2.19 and a short float of 1% with 1.22 days to cover. Shares are up 8.9% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Wednesday.

TheStreet Quant Ratings rates LyondellBasell Industries as a buy. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, impressive record of earnings per share growth, compelling growth in net income, revenue growth and largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company shows low profit margins.

Highlights from the ratings report include:

Powered by its strong earnings growth of 85.08% and other important driving factors, this stock has surged by 42.38% over the past year, outperforming the rise in the S&P 500 Index during the same period. Regarding the stock's future course, although almost any stock can fall in a broad market decline, LYB should continue to move higher despite the fact that it has already enjoyed a very nice gain in the past year.

LYONDELLBASELL INDUSTRIES NV reported significant earnings per share improvement in the most recent quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. The company has demonstrated a pattern of positive earnings per share growth over the past two years. We feel that this trend should continue. During the past fiscal year, LYONDELLBASELL INDUSTRIES NV increased its bottom line by earning $6.78 versus $4.97 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($7.30 versus $6.78).

The net income growth from the same quarter one year ago has significantly exceeded that of the S&P 500 and the Chemicals industry. The net income increased by 85.8% when compared to the same quarter one year prior, rising from $632.00 million to $1,174.00 million.

LYB's revenue growth trails the industry average of 13.1%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues slightly increased by 0.4%. Growth in the company's revenue appears to have helped boost the earnings per share.

The current debt-to-equity ratio, 0.47, is low and is below the industry average, implying that there has been successful management of debt levels. To add to this, LYB has a quick ratio of 1.54, which demonstrates the ability of the company to cover short-term liquidity needs.